Configuring OpenVPN after Server

[DrewVPN]

Hello all and I apologize in advance for my ignorance on a lot of these questions but I've tried reading up on every walk-through I can on the topic and am at the point that I have to ask others for help. I've spent the last week trying to get a VPN setup on our's company's network but behind our server and cannot get it to work. Let me start with the layout of how what I'm trying to do. At our small business, we have our internet that is supplied via a DSL Modem/Router as the source and then we connect our server to that via Ethernet cable. From there, our server assigns the computers in the building their own IP addresses and allows them to connect to the server's Point of Sales system and network webpages. All of the computers are connected via Ethernet cable as well and have no wireless capabilities, except for the laptops that we bought to try to take home with us to connect to the network.

I recently purchased a Netgear X6S or R8000P to act as a VPN server to allow connections from outside of the network to use the server and it's systems. I connected the router's WAN port to one of the ports on our server's switches for the workstations Ethernet cables and then used the router's admin page to setup the VPN. The instructions were pretty straight forward and specifies how to use OpenVPN on the client computers by downloading the config file and connecting that way. The problem I'm running into of course is that the IP address that the router has is probably just a gateway and therefore not an IP address that an outside computer could connect to, which is where my problem lies. I'm sure that if I was to figure out the DSL Modem/Router's true IP address that it wouldn't tunnel me into the LAN connection of the server's workstations because anything before the server at our business isn't able to see the network or server systems either, which is why I installed the R8000P after the server.

I tried another piece of VPN software called SoftEther and I was able to get that connected from outside the network and it would allow the computer to use the server's webpages but only if I chose to use an IP address supplied by them through their Azure project or what not. This would be fine with me if the connection was somewhat fast but for some reason, even though I could access the server's webpages when connected through SoftEther, the Point of Sales system wouldn't work right at all. For instance, a batch file that would open up the point of sales system through command prompts would just sit there with the small black screen open for about 10 minutes before it did 1 line of code, and would take another 5 minutes to do the second line.

I'm assuming that the speed issue must have to do with connecting to the IP address supplied on a host server much further away and so I'd love to just configure this properly but again, I know I'm quite ignorant when it comes to setting up a VPN due to the fact that it's behind our company's server and the internet is controlled through it as well. Through UltraVNC or Team Viewer, we are able to successfully Remote in and control the computers that way but it's not ideal and I just figured if we're somehow able to connect to the computers through Remote Viewers then their must be a way to connect to the network from outside of the office through a VPN.

All of your input and help would be super appreciated in this matter because I'm basically at a point where I'm going to kill these laptops or someone else if I keep just researching this without finding a solution.

[DrewVPN]

I'm sorry for posting this in this section, I did not see the subsections and see now that there is a config help section to post this in. I do not know how to move it there or how to request to do so and so hopefully a moderator can remove this posting and I will just repost this in the correct section, thanks.

[TinCanTech]

This section is good for your post .. Will take a more thorough look soon

[DrewVPN]

So basically my problem is trying to figure out what the host name IP and port to use would be. My router's webpage displays the WAN IP and therefore the router's VPN page says to use that as the host IP to connect to with OpenVPN in the config file of the client that it creates automatically for me. The problem is, it never connects and says that the handshake fails.

Being as the IP address is being assigned by our company's server, I don't know if that is the problem or not. I can use the IP address assigned by the server to computers on the network to do Remote Desktop connections through UltraVNC viewer, so I would think that there must be a similar way to connect through a VPN instead. Again, the only way I've successfully connected through a VPN is by using SoftEther's hostname through the VPNAzure server of theirs.

I would really appreciate somebody's help with this, I'm new to VPN's and have tried to learn everything I can to get this going but I keep striking out.

[TinCanTech]

Start here:
HOWTO: For OpenVPN Community Edition

Please see:
HOWTO: Request Help !